Hassan Maishera
When the GENIUS Act was signed into law during Q3 2025, it established something the digital payments industry had spent years anticipating, i.e., a federal framework for payment stablecoins in the United States, with binding implementation regulations required to be finalised by July 2026.
Most of the coverage that followed focused on what the law means for stablecoin issuers, but comparatively little was/has been written about what it means for the enterprises and financial institutions that will need compliant payment infrastructure in place when those regulations land.
From the outside looking in, the law establishes licensing, supervision, and reserve requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers, covering anti-money laundering obligations, operational standards, and regulatory jurisdiction for institutions under the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and OCC (with all three bodies actively finalizing application rules before the July 2026 implementation deadline).
That said, the market is not waiting for the final rules to take shape as B2B stablecoin payments have already surged from under $100 million per month in early 2023 to over $6 billion per month by mid-2025, a 60x increase in under three years driven almost entirely by cross-border B2B use cases.
Lastly, in a survey conducted after the GENIUS Act's passage, EY-Parthenon found that 54% of non-adopters expected to integrate stablecoins within six to twelve months, with 77% of corporates identifying cross-border supplier payments as their top use case.
Why the Infrastructure Gap Does Not Wait for the Regulations
The reason enterprise payments infrastructure has become a pressing operational question rather than a planning exercise is that stablecoin rails (and the multi-currency fiat access that connects them to existing payment systems) require regulatory authorisations across multiple jurisdictions, not just the United States.
A corporate treasury function wanting to route cross-border supplier payments through stablecoin settlement needs access to SEPA, Faster Payments, and local ACH systems, and it needs that access through a counterparty holding the authorisations required in each relevant jurisdiction.
Finding a correspondent bank willing to serve that function has historically been one of the most consistent friction points for businesses at the intersection of digital assets and fiat payment flows. The debanking environment that has affected crypto-adjacent businesses across Europe and the US has not disappeared simply because regulatory posture has softened at the policy level.
In Europe alone, 86% of digital asset firms have either failed to open or have closed a merchant bank account.
OpenPayd fills this gap perfectly, thanks, in large part, to its licence accrual from the UK’s FCA, Malta’s MFSA, and Canadian FINTRAC. As a result, the company is able to provide regulated access to fiat payment rails that do not rely on a single correspondent banking relationship that can be quietly wound down under commercial or regulatory pressure.
Moreover, its digital infrastructure connects SEPA, Faster Payments, SWIFT, and local ACH systems with digital asset capabilities through a single API, meaning the enterprise finance function looking to route stablecoin payments through compliant fiat on-ramps does not need to stitch together multiple providers to achieve a straightforward infrastructure outcome.
The Operational Case in 2026 Numbers
The $180 billion in annualised transaction volume that OpenPayd processes across more than 1,000 clients (including Kraken, Ripple, Bitfinex, OKX, and Wirex) at a reported 99.99% uptime is not coincidentally concentrated in exactly the category of business that has historically faced the most acute banking access challenges.
It is instead a deliberate positioning toward clients whose operational continuity depends on a payment infrastructure that holds its own regulatory authorisations rather than relying on a banking sponsor that can be pressured from the outside.
The virtual IBAN architecture handles transaction reconciliation automatically, while multi-currency account structures provide real-time treasury visibility across positions in a single dashboard. For a corporate treasury function managing cross-border supplier payments at scale, the operational value is not speed alone. It is the removal of the dependency on banking relationships that remain revocable on relatively short notice.
Big Changes are Coming
Stablecoins are projected to represent 3% of all US dollar payments in 2026 and 10% by 2031, with EY-Parthenon estimating that between 5% and 10% of all cross-border payments will settle in stablecoins by 2030, representing between $2.1 trillion and $4.2 trillion in annual value. That trajectory has been building for several years, but the GENIUS Act has given it a regulatory frame that removes a substantial portion of the institutional hesitation that was previously slowing enterprise adoption.
The enterprises best positioned in that transition are not necessarily the ones who move fastest once the GENIUS Act's final regulations are published, but the ones who have already integrated a compliant, multi-jurisdiction payment infrastructure and are operationally ready to scale when the regulatory clarity finally comes.
Twelve months is a compressed timeline for infrastructure decisions of this magnitude, and the runway is shorter than it appears. Interesting times ahead!
